MONDAY, 11 FEBRUARY 2002
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Poem: "She Walks in Beauty," by George Gordon, Lord Byron.
She Walks in Beauty
1
She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellowed to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.
2
One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impaired the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o'er her face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express
How pure, how dear their dwelling place.
3
And on that cheek, and o'er that brow,
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent!
It's the feast
day of St. Caedmon, the first poet known to compose in English. He was
a shepherd who was so embarrassed by his poor singing voice that he used to
excuse himself from feasts when he thought he might have to take a turn singing.
After doing so one evening, he went out to sleep in the stable. He dreamed a
voice said to him, "Caedmon, sing something to me. Sing the beginning of
created things." And he did-in verses he'd never heard before. He remembered
them when he awoke, and added more. He showed them to the abbess of the local
monastery, and the abbess urged him to take holy vows, as he had obviously been
given a gift by God.
It's the birthday of poet and novelist Roy Fuller, born in Oldham, Lancashire, England (1912). He wrote thirty-one volumes of poetry, including Owls and Artificers (1971) and Professors and Gods (1973).
It's the birthday of screenwriter Philip Dunne, born in New York City (1908). He wrote 36 films, including How Green Was My Valley and The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, and directed ten others. He was one of the founders of the Screen Writers Guild.
It's the birthday of physicist Leo Szilard, born in Budapest, Hungary (1898). In 1939, a few years after coming to America, knowing that German scientists had discovered nuclear fission, he drafted the famous letter that Albert Einstein sent to President Roosevelt advocating the development of an atomic bomb. Three years later, in the Manhattan Project, he and Enrico Fermi oversaw the first nuclear chain reaction. "We turned the switch and saw the flashes," he wrote later. "We watched them for a little while and then we switched everything off and went home. That night there was no doubt in my mind that the world was headed for grief." In 1961, he published a book of satirical fantasies on the misuse of science called The Voice of the Dolphin, and the following year he founded the Council for a Livable World, a lobbying group for arms control.
It's the birthday of Thomas
Alva Edison, born in Milan, Ohio (1847). His favorite invention was
the phonograph, but he didn't see any use for it and put it away for ten years.
He also invented the means of showing motion pictures; the stock ticker; and,
though he didn't invent the incandescent light bulb, he perfected it and made
its widespread use practical. Within three years of perfecting the light bulb,
he had invented the generating, switching and transmitting devices necessary
to use it on a large scale, and was operating the world's first power station.
TUESDAY, 12 FEBRUARY 2002
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Poem: "Now Winter Nights Enlarge," by Thomas Campion.
Now Winter Nights Enlarge
Now winter nights enlarge
The number of their hours,
And clouds their storms discharge
Upon the airy towers.
Let now the chimneys blaze
And cups o'erflow with wine;
Let well-tuned words amaze
With harmony divine!
Now yellow waxen lights
Shall wait on honey love
While youthful revels, masques and Courtly sights,
Sleep's leaden spells remove.
This time doth well dispense
With lovers' long discourse;
Much speech hath some defence,
Though beauty no remorse.
All do not all things well;
Some measures comely tread,
Some knotted riddles tell,
Some poems smoothly read.
The summer hath his joys,
And winter his delights;
Though love and all his pleasures are but toys,
They shorten tedious nights.
It's the birthday of the opera and film director
Franco Zeffirelli,
born in Florence (1923). He became famous for his lavish set designs for Luchino
Visconti's opera productions, and made a name for himself with his film version
of Romeo and Juliet (1968).
It was on this day in 1909 that the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People-the NAACP-was founded
in New York City.
It's the birthday of the composer Roy
Harris, born in 1898 in a log cabin in Lincoln County, Oklahoma. He
was a truck driver until he started studying music at the age of 24. Perhaps
because he was born on Lincoln's birthday, his two symphonies are titled The
Gettysburg Address (1944) and the Abraham Lincoln symphony (1965).
It's the birthday of Abraham
Lincoln, the16th president of the United States, born in a log cabin
near Hodgenville, Kentucky (1809). When he was a small child his family moved
to Indiana, where his step-mother inspired the boy to educate himself. When
he was twenty-one, the family moved to Illinois, where he began to study law
on his own. He served in the Illinois state legislature for six years, without
any particular distinction, and then began a successful law practice in Springfield,
representing railroads and other business interests. He ran for the U.S. Senate
in 1858, against the Democrat Stephen A. Douglas. He lost the election, but
Lincoln's anti-slavery positions won him the presidential nomination of the
new Republican party in 1860. And though he received only 40% of the popular
vote, he won a majority of the votes in the electoral college, and was elected
president. He had said he was willing to tolerate slavery where it existed,
but didn't want to see it expanded to the territories. Nonetheless, the southern
states seceded, and the Civil War began.
It's the birthday of the Renaissance poet
and composer Thomas
Campion, born in London (1567).
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Poem: "For
What Binds Us," by Jane Hirshfield from Of Gravity and Angels (Wesleyan
University Press).
For What Binds Us
There are names for what binds us:
strong forces, weak forces.
Look around, you can see them:
the skin that forms in a half-empty cup,
nails rusting into the places they join,
joints dovetailed on their own weight.
The way things stay so solidly
wherever they've been set down-
and gravity, scientists say, is weak.
And see how the flesh grows back
across a wound, with a great vehemence,
more strong
than the simple, untested surface before.
There's a name for it on horses,
when it comes back darker and raised: proud flesh,
as all flesh
is proud of its wounds, wears them
as honors given out after battle,
small triumphs pinned to the chest-
And when two people have loved each other
see how it is like a
scar between their bodies,
stronger, darker, and proud;
how the black cord makes of them a single fabric
that nothing can tear or mend.
On this day in 1945, as World War II was drawing to a close,
the German city of Dresden
was attacked by over 800 American and British bombers. The city had
no heavy industry, no strategic importance; it was simply a population center,
and the attack had the purpose of destroying German morale. The city, which
had been known before the war as the "Florence on the Elbe" for its
beautiful architecture and works of art, was destroyed. 50,000 people died in
the bombings.
It's the birthday of the painter Grant
Wood, born near Anamosa, Iowa (1892). He made four trips to Europe in
the 1920s, and saw the primitive paintings of the late middle ages that later
influenced his work. He came back to Iowa, to Cedar Rapids, and settled down
to paint. He said, "I gave up looking for the tumble-down farm houses that
looked 'Europey,' and started painting the cardboardy frame houses on Iowa farms,
and the details of farm women's aprons." His painting of 1930, "American
Gothic," showing a farmer and his daughter outside their home, was
a great sensation at the Art Institute of Chicago when it was shown there. He
taught painting at the University of Iowa until his death in 1942.
It was on this day in 1692 that members of Scottish clan of
Macdonald were killed in what became known as the Massacre
of Glencoe.
It was on this day in 1542 that Catherine
Howard, the fifth wife of Henry VIII, was beheaded in the
Tower of London. She had been the maid of honor at Henry's fourth wedding,
but when that marriage was annulled, she married the king herself. When Henry
learned she'd had affairs before their marriage, he became incensed, and had
parliament pass a law declaring it treason for an unchaste woman to marry the
king. She was beheaded two days later.
THURSDAY, 14 FEBRUARY 2002
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Poem: "A Red, Red Rose," by Robert Burns.
A Red, Red Rose
My love is like a red, red rose
That's newly sprung in June:
My love is like the melody
That's sweetly played in tune.
As fair art thou, my bonnie lass,
So deep in love am I:
And I will love thee still, my dear,
Till a' the seas gang dry.
Till a' the seas gang dry, my dear,
And the rocks melt wi' the sun:
And I will love thee still, my dear,
While the sands o' life shall run.
And fare thee weel, my only love,
And fare thee weel a while!
And I will come again, my love,
Thou' it were ten thousand mile.
Today is Valentine's
Day, originally the Roman feast of Lupercalia, a fertility celebration.
The holiday was Christianized in 270 A.D., and the date changed from February
15 to 14 to commemorate the martyred Saint Valentine. By the late Middle Ages,
the modern tradition of exchanging declarations of love had evolved.
It's the birthday of journalist and author
Carl
Bernstein, born in Washington D.C. (1944). Interested from an early
age in journalism, by 22 Bernstein was a reporter for the Washington Post.
He and another young reporter, Bob Woodward, checked out a burglary at the Democratic
Party's office in the Watergate apartment complex, and traced the involvement
of the White House. They were awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 1973, the year before
Nixon resigned rather than face impeachment. They went on to collaborate on
the bestseller All the President's Men (1974).
On this day in 1921, the literary journal
The
Little Review faced
obscenity charges
in New York City for having published installments of James Joyce's novel
Ulysses (1919 and 1920).
It's the birthday of Canadian poet A.
Moses Klein, born in Ratno, Russia (1909). His collections include Hath
Not a Jew… (1940) and The Hitleriad (1944). He's also the author
of the novel The Second Scroll (1951).
On this day in 1895, Oscar
Wilde's play The Importance of Being Earnest opened in London.
It was a year of great success for Wilde-his play, An Ideal Husband,
was also a hit on the West End-but also a year of personal despair. Just 3 months
after The Importance of Being Earnest had its premiere, a jury convicted
Wilde of 'gross indecency' for his romantic involvement with Lord Alfred Douglas,
a man 16 years younger than he was. Wilde was sentenced to two years of hard
labor, which he served in Reading Gaol-an ordeal that destroyed his health.
He spent the last 3 years of his life drifting about France and Italy, and writing
his long prison poem, "The Ballad of Reading Gaol"-which was printed
in 1898. He died in Paris, in his room at the Hotel d'Alsace, most likely of
meningitis. He was just 6 weeks past his 46th birthday (1900).
It's the birthday of comedian
Jack Benny, born Benjamin Kubelsky, in Waukegan, Illinois (1894),
the son of a saloonkeeper. A violin prodigy, he hoped for a concert career,
but by 17 was playing in vaudeville, where he discovered he was not only musical,
but also very funny. His NBC radio program, "The Jack Benny Show,"
began in 1932 and ran weekly for 23 years. His on-stage character was a sour,
exceedingly stingy person, a remarkably awful violin player, and perpetually
39 years old.
FRIDAY, 15 FEBRUARY 2002
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Poem: "Publication is the Auction Of the Mind of Man," by Emily Dickinson.
Publication is the Auction Of the Mind of Man
Publication-is the Auction
Of the Mind of Man-
Poverty-be justifying
For so foul a thing
Possibly-but We-would rather
From Our Garret go
White-Unto the White Creator-
Than invest-Our Snow-
Thought belong to Him who gave it-
Then-to Him Who bear
Its Corporeal illustration-Sell
The Royal Air-
In the Parcel-Be the Merchant
Of the Heavenly Grace-
But reduce no Human Spirit
To Disgrace of Price-
It's the birthday of cartoonist Matt
Groening, born in Portland, Oregon (1954). Inspired by his cartoonist
father, he grew up drawing. He spent his college years at Evergreen State University,
in Olympia, Washington, then moved to Los Angeles where he developed a comic
strip he called "Life in Hell" (1980). Within a year, the strip was
syndicated in 20 newspapers. In 1987, he created an animated family he named
"The Simpsons" for the Fox
network's The Tracy Ullman Show.
It's the birthday of American composer and
pianist Harold
Arlen, born Hyman Arluck, in Buffalo (1905), the son of a musician.
In the mid-1920s he met lyricist Ted Koehler; together they collaborated on
such tunes as "Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea" and "I've
Got the World on A String." Among his many Broadway and Hollywood songs
are "It's Only A Paper Moon," "That Old Black Magic," and
"Somewhere Over the Rainbow."
It's the birthday of American reformer Susan
B. Anthony, born in Adams, Massachusetts (1820). She was a schoolteacher
and liberal Quaker who opposed slavery and favored 'temperance.' She campaigned
all her life for women's rights, including the right to vote. In 1869, she organized
the National Woman Suffrage Association with her friend Elizabeth Cady Stanton.
At 80 she retired as president of the National Woman Suffrage Association, but
remained an advocate and public speaker until her death in 1906.
It's the birthday of John Sutter, born Johann August Suter, in Kandern, Germany (1803). He came over to California, got 49,000 acres of land from Mexico, and built a sawmill, Sutter's Fort (1841), where gold was discovered in 1848. It was the beginning of the Gold Rush of 1849.
It's the birthday of Italian astronomer Galileo
Galilei, born in Pisa (1564). He devised a simple open-air thermometer
(1607), but his greatest breakthrough was to improve the refracting telescope
(1609). It made possible his confirmation of the theory of Copernicus, who insisted
that Aristotle was wrong: it's not the Earth that's the center of things, but
the Sun. Galileo's books were banned, and he was summoned to Rome to be tried
for heresy. In 1633 he was convicted, sentenced to house arrest for life, and
his books were ordered burned. He was forced either to renounce all his Copernican
beliefs or be tortured on the rack. While signing his declaration that the earth
was stationary, he muttered, "And yet…it moves." Confined to
his home, he continued to study physics and astronomy, until, in his seventies,
he grew completely blind.
SATURDAY, 16 FEBRUARY 2002
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Poem: "Not Only The Eskimos," by Liesel Mueller from Alive Together (Louisiana State University Press).
Not Only The Eskimos
We have only one noun
but as many different kinds:
the grainy snow of the Puritans
and snow of soft, fat flakes,
guerrilla snow, which comes in the night
and changes the world by morning,
rabbinical snow, a permanent skullcap
on the highest mountains,
snow that blows in like the Lone Ranger,
riding hard from out of the West,
surreal snow in the Dakotas,
when you can't find your house, your street,
though you are not in a dream
or a science-fiction movie,
snow that tastes good to the sun
when it licks black tree limbs,
leaving us only one white stripe,
a replica of a skunk,
unbelievable snows:
the blizzard that strikes on the tenth of April,
the false snow before Indian summer,
the Big Snow on Mozart's birthday,
when Chicago became the Elysian fields
and strangers spoke to each other,
paper snow, cut and taped
to the inside of grade-school windows,
in an old tale, the snow
that covers a nest of strawberries,
small hearts, ripe and sweet,
the special snow that goes with Christmas,
whether it falls or not,
the Russian snow we remember
along with the warmth and smell of our furs,
though we have never traveled
to Russia or worn furs,
Villon's snows of yesteryear,
lost with ladies gone out like matches,
the snow in Joyce's "The Dead,"
the silent, secret snow
in a story by Conrad Aiken,
which is the snow of first love,
the snowfall between the child
and the spacewoman on TV,
snow as idea of whiteness,
as in snowdrop, snow goose, snowball bush,
the snow that puts stars in your hair,
and your hair, which has turned to snow,
the snow Elinor Wylie walked in
in velvet shoes,
the snow before her footprints
and the snow after,
the snow in the back of our heads,
whiter than white, which has to do
with childhood again each year.
On this day in 1959, Fidel
Castro took over as the Prime Minister of Cuba. The son of a wealthy
sugar cane farmer, Castro had practiced law in Havana, but then, disgusted with
the status quo, entered politics as a member of the Cuban People's Party. After
ousting dictator Fulgencio Batista, Castro invited the wrath of the United States
by nationalizing all the sugar plantations-many of which were owned by absentee
landlords in the U.S.A.
It's the birthday of novelist Richard
Ford, born in Jackson, Mississippi (1944). His first novel, A Piece
of My Heart (1976) follows the journeys of two men to their southern homes.
In the early 1980s, Ford took a break from writing fiction to work as a writer
for Inside Sports-an experience that shaped his novel The Sportswriter
(1986), and its Pulitzer Prize-winning sequel, Independence Day (1995).
On this day in 1923, British archeologist
Howard Carter, with British antiquarian George Herbert (also known as
Lord Carnarvon), uncovered King
Tut's Tomb. Once inside the pharaoh's burial chamber, they found heaps
of jewels, four golden chariots, and ornaments of ivory, ebony and other precious
metals, most of which went to the Cairo Museum.
It's the birthday of historian Henry
Adams, born in Boston (1838), the great-grandson of President John Adams.
He worked as secretary to his congressman father, who served as the American
ambassador to Britain during the Civil War. In 1868, he settled in Washington,
D.C., and wrote reform-minded essays for The Nation. He also wrote a
nine-volume History of the United States of America from 1801 to 1817.
But his autobiography, The Education of Henry Adams (1918), is considered
his greatest achievement.
SUNDAY, 17 FEBRUARY 2002
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Poem: "Solitude," by Ella Wheeler Wilcox.
Solitude
Laugh, and the world laughs with you;
Weep, and you weep alone;
For the sad old earth must borrow its mirth,
But has trouble enough of its own.
Sing, and the hills will answer;
Sigh, it is lost on the air;
The echoes bound to a joyful sound,
But shrink from voicing care.
Rejoice, and men will seek you;
Grieve, and they turn and go;
They want full measure of all your pleasure,
But they do not need your woe.
Be glad, and your friends are many;
Be sad, and you lose them all,-
There are none to decline your nectared wine,
But alone you must drink life's gall.
Feast, and your halls are crowded;
Fast, and the world goes by.
Succeed and give, and it helps you live,
But no man can help you die.
For there is room in the halls of pleasure
For a large and lordly train,
But one by one we must all file on
Through the narrow aisles of pain.
It's the birthday of novelist Chaim
Potok, born in the Bronx, New York City (1929). When he told his mother
he wanted to become a writer, she responded, "You want to write stories?
That's very nice. You be a brain surgeon, and on the side you write stories."
His novel The Chosen (1967) won the Pulitzer Prize.
It's the birthday of the Australian journalist
and poet Andrew
Barton Paterson (1864). He was a World War I correspondent and the author
of several books of light verse, including The Animals Noah Forgot (1933).
He's best known for "Waltzing Matilda," adapted from a traditional
verse, which became Australia's national song.
It's the birthday of Irish-American editor and publisher S. S. McClure, born in County Antrim, Ireland (1857). He organized the first syndicated newspaper in the United States, the 'McClure Syndicate' (1884), and later founded McClure's magazine (1893), the most controversial muckraking journal of its time.
It's the birthday of entrepreneur Montgomery
Ward, born in Chatham, New Jersey (1844), who came up with the mail-order
system of merchandising. As a young man he sold goods to farmers who grumbled
about the mark-up costs. This experience prompted his idea of ordering goods
direct, by mail: customers could buy lower-cost items direct from the warehouse
through catalogue orders they sent in from home. He issued his first catalogue
in 1872-a single sheet of paper offering 150 items.
It's the birthday of René Laennec,
born in Quimper, near Brittany (1781). He's called the "father of thoracic
medicine" for having invented the stethoscope.
It's the birthday of Thomas
Malthus, born in The Rookery, near Dorking, England (1766), author of
the Essay on Principle of Population. Malthus was pessimistic about the
future because of the natural tendency of the population to increase faster
than the means of subsistence.
